SIFF 2010 Preview: The Maldives playing to Riders of the Purple Sage @ The Triple Door

If you’re looking for the Seattle band that can best be described as “country western,” it won’t be long before you come across The Maldives. There are plenty of bands that might include “country” or “folk” as one of their descriptors, but you’ll be hard pressed to find many bands currently touring who wear the terms as proudly and wholeheartedly as The Maldives. Their songs are passionate, timeless, and feature little or no modern “indie” elements or influence, instead being comprised of tried and true twangy guitar lines, lonely pedal steel, a few strings here and there, and John Dodson’s drawling wail that is hard to believe was fine-tuned anywhere west of Texas.

It doesn’t seem like a stretch then, for the Seattle natives to be chosen to provide a soundtrack to the silent 1925 western Riders of the Purple Sage, which they will be doing live this Tuesday at the Triple Door as part of SIFF 2010. The film, which is based on the 1911 novel of the same name by Zane Grey, who basically invented the modern western, is 56 minutes long and filled with gun fights, saloons, vengeful pursuits, and everything else you’d expect from a classic western. And with The Maldives playing along live as the movie is screened, it’s hard to imagine anything cooler if you’re a fan of the Old West living in the Northwest. It is one of the many unique events that make the SIFF great, and you’re not going to see a performance like this put on as part of a tour or just for the hell of it. So it would behoove you to make it out to the Triple Door on Tuesday for a country-themed pairing of music and film that should complement each other as well as whiskey and revolvers.